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GK - Ed Baldy RB - Jack Sutherland CB - Matty Murphy CB - Andrew Skinner LB - Tom Smith RM - Andrew Greig CM - Gavin Morrison CM - Liam Polworth LM - Martin Laing ST - Gregory Tade ST - Shane Sutherland

This isn't quite what Rossco expected when he was promised a coaching role.

I will pledge a fiver and feel mean in doing so after all these very generous donations but I am a poor student and genuinely can't afford anymore. Also my smaller donation also means anyone else doesn't have to feel bad in pledging a lesser amount so come on guys lets get pledging and raise as much as possible. I will go for a time of five hours, five minutes and five seconds to match my five pound pledge. I'd also like to take this chance to congratulate you in doing this and wish you all the best.

You are dead right that it will never be eradicated if the people who make the law and those who enforce it are spending all their time and energy scrutinising football while the Orange Order with impunity struts its triumphalist way as close as it can to Catholic areas, creating all the tension and resentment that it can muster. Unacceptable though sectarian behaviour at football most definitely is, it seems absurd to concentrate all the energies on football grounds while the Glorious Magnificent Lodge Loyal 1690 No Surrender FTP remains free to infect the community at large with its bigoted filth. A couple of weeks ago, as July 12th approached, I wrote to the relevant Scottish Executive minister Roseanna Cunningham and said largely that. I also suggested that sorting out the Orange Order was a far higher priority than football. I even put it to her that this wouldn't even be a vote losing policy since I couldn't imagine too many of Her Majesty's Bowler Hats and Umbrellas voting SNP in the first place. Spot on, CB.......it has always struck me as ironic that Glasgow, in Scotland, has more sectarian marches than Londonderry and Belfast in Northern Ireland combined do to celebrate an Irish Battle. And in Glasgow, Orange Order and affiliated marches are over 200 annually......while Hibernian and affiliated marches are less than 20. It is just as ironic that the Orange Order says on its website that The Protestant ethic is one of tolerance of other faiths and ideals. It is this tolerance and liberty that the Orange Order promotes and defends. Tolerant of other faiths......maybe they are........if that faith isn't Catholic. The Order appears to have a much bigger problem with Catholics than with any other religion in the world to the extent that they organise a couple of hundred marches a year specifically to celebrate the killing of Catholics in Ireland, and the imposition of Protestant rule in Ireland at the point of a gun. Doesn't seem a lot different, to me, to any display of triumphalism... no more useful or appropriate than if Unionists decided to have a march through Culloden and Inverness to celebrate the Battle of Culloden, the demise of the clan system and the Englishing of Scotland..or if people in the UK decided to march through Dresden to celebrate the Dresden bombings. The Orange Order and their biases are instrumental in continuing and reinforcing an irrational outlook, particularly in the Central Belt, which has no place in this 21st Century and must be controlled. Perhaps the simplest way would be to make them pay for all the policing of all their marches and bankrupt them. Given we have laws which are aimed at combating the incitement to violence, I have never quite understood why nobody has yet made a test case citing sectarian marches. Maybe it would also help if our Government joined the 21st century and realised that it makes them look much more than foolish when a member of the Royal Family is permitted to marry into any religion except Catholicism without harming their position.........so we can have a Muslim, Jewish, Moonie, Mormon, Pagan etc consort for the monarch......but not a Catholic. Rational? I think not!

You are dead right that it will never be eradicated if the people who make the law and those who enforce it are spending all their time and energy scrutinising football while the Orange Order with impunity struts its triumphalist way as close as it can to Catholic areas, creating all the tension and resentment that it can muster. Unacceptable though sectarian behaviour at football most definitely is, it seems absurd to concentrate all the energies on football grounds while the Glorious Magnificent Lodge Loyal 1690 No Surrender FTP remains free to infect the community at large with its bigoted filth. A couple of weeks ago, as July 12th approached, I wrote to the relevant Scottish Executive minister Roseanna Cunningham and said largely that. I also suggested that sorting out the Orange Order was a far higher priority than football. I even put it to her that this wouldn't even be a vote losing policy since I couldn't imagine too many of Her Majesty's Bowler Hats and Umbrellas voting SNP in the first place.

I expect at least a 5% increase in their performance taking the majority to the "Above Useless" level of efficiency.

The very last thing we need is more inexperienced youngsters on loan.

Lots of folk going for a back 4. Back 3 instead? Push up and play the offside trap.

I knew there was only one Scotty Davies but IHE had me wondering there :biggrin:

We need a decent right back

Esson Proctor (would prefer new RB), Tokely, Aldred, Gillet Hayes, A. Shinnie, Tansey, Ross, Doran Foran, Subs: Tuffey, G. Shinnie, Meekings (if fit), McKay, Morrison, Sutherland, Tade I sincerely hope that out of the 3 or 4 new faces he brings in 2 are defenders. Proctor has been far from convincing and we have no real cover for Tokely or Aldred as Meekings still isnt fully fit i think. Wouldnt mind seeing Tade get a start but maybe bench seeing as he has been injured.

Butcher keen to add a defender (Grant Munro?) and central midfielder (Russell Duncan?) and a striker. Surely be releasing those 2 he caused himself more problems than he fixed if thats the case.

A lot of relevant points there Oddquine. Interestingly enough, Orange Order rules state that an Orangeman - should strenuously oppose the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome, and scrupulously avoid countenancing (by his presence or otherwise) any act or ceremony of Popish worship; which as far as I am concerned confirms that the very purpose - indeed, if you look at ther history, the sole purpose - of their existence is to oppose Catholicism. Up here we don't have the Orange Order and have nothing more than the odd abortive Orange Walk and the annual Apprentice Boys pilgrimage to the Portland Club (via, inexplicably, the War Memorial where they have the affrontery to try to gain credibility by recognising our war dead.) But we do on the other hand have the Free Presbyterian Church (the Tartan Taliban) which is just about as bigoted as the Orangemen. This was the highly distasteful and outrageously self righteous organisation which in 1989 banned the Lord Chancellor Lord MacKay of Clashfern for attending the Roman Catholic funeral of his colleague Lord Wheatley. It's also an interesting observation you make about the Battle of Culloden which brought to an end the 60 year conflict which began when James II was thrown out in 1688 and of which the campaign which included the Battle of the Boyne and the Siege of Londonderry marked the start. And yes, it's completely absurd that the Act of Settlement of 1701, banning Catholics from the throne (whilst welcoming foreigners!), should still apply. Mind you, if i had my way, I would simply extend the Act of Settlement to ban EVERYBODY from the throne! But 300 and odd years on, they still make a triumphalist fuss about the Boyne etc but the attitude to Culloden is totally different. So what's the dinstinction? In a word - Ireland. What's kept the Orange nonsense going has been Irish politics and the vexed question of the early 1920s of what to do about the island as a whole. The problem is that the settlement - which was the subject of the 1921 Cabinet meeting in Inverness Town Hall -resulted in a Catholic south and predominantly Protestant north. The southern part fought among themselves in the Irish Civil War and, apart from a few ultra IRA extremists, the pro Treaty view has since become accepted. Now they're more than happy to make their way in the world by providing players for Inverness Caley Thistle. But in the north, the Protestants still seem to feel the need to go around like dogs urinating on lamp posts to mark their territory. Unfortunately this rubbish has also been imported into Scotland and, worse still, has become incorporated into support for the country's two largest football teams - which, I would argue, have become larger as a result of being (albeit invountarily) the focal points for this political and religious divide. In consequence all the other teams in the land find themselves correspondingly impoverished. So Inverness Town Hall in 1921 maybe has a lot to answer for. If the decision on that day had instead been to let the entire island of Ireland go its own way and sort out its own problems, a lot of this nonsense might have been avoided.

I will be drying out for a few weeks after a little too much recently.

And I hope many of you, especially those who wont be travelling, go to the other thread and support the 'wee man' through the efforts of our own intrepid reporter Davie.